To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade? That is the Question.

Tool Thursday, with Jed Hackett
Leopard is here! Leopard is here! Everyone run down to your local Mac store and purchase the next large game cat! After all, we have had to struggle through with Tiger for an eternity. I mean it has been at least a year since we were able to upgrade from Panther or was it Cougar, Bobcat? God forbid we use that outdated dinosaur of an operating system they call Tiger. Is it just me? Or does everyone out there get sick of shelling out a few grand a year chasing the endless upgrades? OSX, Digi, Antares, Waves, Roxio, 1k Multimedia, Spectrasonics, McDSP, etc. And then there are all of the hardware upgrades as well. It seems like just as we make the leap to the next thing, get everything stable, sit down and get to work, we have to get right back up and jump again. And it all costs money! Everyone says “you can’t be afraid of change” but lets face it, we all hate it and fear it just a little. However, if you don’t play the game, in a few years, you aren’t in the game. So what do you do?
I guess first I need to fill you in on my career long angst. I know how to do good work, but if I don’t have the necessary tools how can I ensure quality work at every session? Do I buy gear, a DAW, or plug-ins and cart them around with me? If I do that, I shift the financial burden from my clients to myself. In other words, if I didn’t own it, they would have to rent it. But if I take that stand and don’t buy gear, I ultimately end up at a budget studio with no gear and I have to jump through hoops to get decent sounds. Then people who aren’t at the session hear the result and think I must not have the engineering chops. And that is no fun!
Everyone has to choose their own poison with this issue. I have made the decision to only purchase gear that will pay for itself or is just plain necessary. I upgrade my Pro Tools rig when there is some functionality that will save me time, or when I have had several requests from clients that require a particular plug in or Pro Tools version or another digi card etc. That way I ensure that I am not just buying a toy. I recommend you do the same so that you’ll have enough money left over to retire some day.
There is actually a great side effect to purchasing computer gear this way. There are so many different entities involved in the writing of software and they all race to stay on the cutting edge. Digi, Mac, and all of the plug in companies push software out the door before it is completely debugged. Even if they all do their best to write good code, they are all writing at the same time chasing a moving target.
Every time you upgrade it takes a while to get things to settle down and stabilize. Once you get to a point that things are stable, you should stay there as long as you can without becoming obsolete. I’ll give you an example- I upgraded to Pro Tools v7.1 and had a really stable system for a long time. As v7.2 came out, I stayed where I was with no problems. Many of my friends upgraded to 7.2 right away and got caught up in the disappearing regions bug. Then 7.3 came out and digi said all is well, jump to 7.3. They still hadn’t fixed the disappearing regions bug entirely and they also introduced a few more errors in the program. It was a rather frustrating 6 months to a year for many engineers. I was perfectly happy at 7.1 the whole time, but then as 7.3 came out I started having compatibility issues with some of my clients that were on 7.3 using the new VCA groups. I just dealt with it for a while by having those clients save me sessions as 6.9 files. When I got the word from my friends that they no longer had disappearing regions with 7.3.1 I made the jump.
I know it is always tempting to dive right in to the new OSX or Pro Tools version as soon as it comes out , but trust me, give them a little while to figure out the bugs and jump in on 7.3.1 instead of 7.3 or 7.4.1 instead of 7.4. Get the idea?
My next bit of advice in upgrading is to visit the digi site and make sure you are running on an approved operating system and that your plug ins are compatible for the particular version of Pro Tools software that you are installing. Here are a few links for you- OSX compatibility and plug in compatibility. Doing this will make your life much easier.
Last but not least comes the hardware upgrades. When you jump to that next computer, make sure Digi has approved it before you by it, or you may never have a stable system. Here are a few links to the Digi approved computers- G5’s , Intel Macs. You may have to wait a bit before buying the latest greatest computer so that Digi can have some time to approve it but you’ll be happy you waited.
Upgrading is like walking through a minefield in a war zone. Move too quickly and you’re dead. Stay still and your dead. Tread slowly and carefully through the minefield and you may make it to the other side intact. And if you do hit a mine at least you gave it your best shot.

Thanks for reading my rant. Please write in with any comments or stories you have about upgrading. ‘Till next time, Take care.

Jed Hackett